


Came to the Wrong Neighbourhood

by TheSovereigntyofReality



Category: Astérix le Gaulois | Asterix the Gaul & Related Fandoms, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Not Steve Friendly, Team Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 10:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17703026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSovereigntyofReality/pseuds/TheSovereigntyofReality
Summary: When Fury tries to add Tony to the Avengers, Tony has some prior knowledge of how people with super-strength should behave.





	Came to the Wrong Neighbourhood

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: If you recognise it from somewhere else, it isn't mine.**

‘It’s a nice offer, Nick, but I’ll have to decline,’ Tony said.

‘Why’s that?’ Fury asked.

‘Because of Rogers, mostly. He control over his strength is, frankly, underwhelming. If you’re going to make him team leader, that’s a shit show I want no part in.’

Fury scowled. ‘You’re a good one to be talking about control, Stark.’

Stark’s smirk told him that wasn’t the right thing to say, and it was too late to correct himself. ‘Cause you’re all about control, aren’t you, Nicky? That’s what S.H.I.E.L.D. is all about. Carter’s control over my father and the way you’re trying to take control over me. But, trust me, if you don’t get Rogers to start controlling him strength, you’re going to have a real problem on your hands.’

‘There isn’t a problem with that,’ Fury stated.

‘Really?’ Tony cocked an eyebrow. ‘How many punching bags has he broken since he was woken up?’ When he received no answer – and he already knew the answer – Tony nodded. ‘Not to mention his actions under the sceptre’s power.’ He held up a hand as Fury went to open his mouth. ‘And before you say the sceptre was responsible for that, I know that. However, it turns out what the sceptre can do without a handler is very limited. I had JARVIS scan my brain and he found that my negative emotions had just been exacerbated. Every bad thought or opinion I had on everyone in the room was simply magnified. The same would have happened to everyone else.’

Fury’s scowl deepened, but there was something in his eye that told Tony he was reflecting on his own emotions in that time and realising that Tony was right.

‘So, if that’s what Rogers is like when his negative emotions are running high, you’ve obviously got a problem. And I know for a fact that Rogers’ self-control is very low. He responds to disagreements by trying to pick fights. And you can’t do that when you’re enhanced.’ Tony turned on his heel. ‘So until you get that in hand, count me out.’ He walked out of the office with nothing more said.

***

Fury had attempted to reel Stark back in, but he wasn’t hearing it.

The only thing he’d really done was disappear in France for a few hours. But they’d long-ago realised his only interest there was some fellow engineering genius called Georgine LaChristie. She wasn’t of interest to them, nowhere near Stark’s league, but she could evidently keep up with him enough to retain his interest.

The worst part was that Banner went with Stark.

No...No, that was a lie.

The worst part was that Stark was very quickly proven right.

Rogers was a walking disaster. Covert missions often ended up getting far more attention than he wanted and he was working twice as hard to cover things up. And why was that? Because Rogers had no concept of controlling his vastly superior strength. By the time he was done, hospitals were having an influx of patients and entire buildings were rubble on the ground.

Covering it up as “Captain America” missions only did so much.

Then people started comparing and asking questions.

They asked questions like: How can that be Captain America? How would Captain America even be alive? Wait, if that’s Captain America where is he getting the money to run all over the planet like this?  
And, then of course, the government wanted to restart Rogers on things like paying taxes. Then there was another batch who wanted to integrate Rogers into the modern world, maybe the same ones – or a different division of them. Whatever the case, that was all dropped into Fury’s lap but at least it took attention off of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The other thing was that Rogers was being compared to Iron Man, unfavourably. People were pointing out that when Iron Man fought the bad guys, he worked with the local authorities, he contained the damage, and any damage he did do was minimal and paid for later on out of Tony Stark’s own pocket. Any victims of the damage were folded into the efforts of the Maria Stark Foundation.

Rogers didn’t seem aware of his bad press and went on like normal.

Then, Rogers and Romanoff discovered the HYDRA infestation. And their response...Well, they thought they were destroying S.H.I.E.L.D., but Fury knew it was more or less just cleaning house and starting over again. What he wasn’t expecting was for, in the aftermath, Stark to get involved.

Apparently, he had more enhanced friends than just Banner.

Burned S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were suddenly getting rescued by people with enough power to smash into high-security HYDRA bases, beat the ever-living crap out of the guards, and extract the prisoners. And Fury suddenly saw how Stark had been able to pick up Rogers’ lack of control upon watching the appropriated footage.

It took Rogers three or four body slams to knock down a fortified wall. These guys knocked them down in just one hit. And there were enough of them to make up the able-bodied population of a small township. Stark clearly already knew these people existed. These people who could knock down fortified walls with next to no effort, and yet beat up baselines but hold back enough to ensure they wouldn’t be permanently damaged by a temporary incapacitation, and could gently carry frightened children out of these bases.

These people knew how to adjust their grips based on what or who they were handling. If this was Stark’s experience with enhanced strength, no fucking wonder he thought Rogers had needed to learn self-control. Compared to these guys, he did. Fury half wondered if these people were the ones who taught him how to mitigate damage as Iron Man. But he didn’t have time to worry about that.

Stark’s friends had only concerned themselves with saving the hostages. After that, they disappeared to whatever hole they’d come from. That left Fury to grab Rogers, Romanoff, and Barton to try and get rid of what was left of HYDRA while he left the resurrected Coulson to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D.

The thing was, Coulson was running into roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. Former agents wanted nothing to do with them. Things that were once easy were now unquestionably difficult, the authority they’d once had seemed to have dried up like a well in a desert in a drought. Then there was this Talbot guy, who was sent by the US military to “keep an eye” on them. It was almost like the world was conspiring to keep them from regaining their footing.

Then Ultron happened.

They needed Stark’s help to stop it.

***

When Tony and JARVIS worked out that Ultron would be after her Arc Cradle, Tony immediately sent her to a small unmapped town in France.

‘It’s the safest place for you and your people right now,’ Tony told her. ‘And Gina’s agreed to let you set up shop in one of her labs.’

‘Gina?’ Helen asked.

It turned out to be Dr. Georgine LaChristie, Gina to her friends. She was easily just as brilliant as Tony, or at least seemed to be in the same league. They’d apparently met when both had been teenagers, when Tony had been running all over the planet (studying most of the time). He’d found the small, mostly-isolated town almost by accident.

Gina was the owner of the only lab space in town, and quite a talented engineer in her own right. The odd-looking wristwatch she wore would come into question later. She was about a year younger than Tony. She wasn’t a dwarf, but she was extremely short. Her blonde hair and blue eyes were deceptive in that they hid just how shrewd and cunning she was. It was easy to see why Tony liked her.

Then Helen noticed what was behind the external facade of an ordinary small town. As a storage port for the French government, they often had to stack and store all sorts of things. However, they did not have things like crane licenses. That’s what outsiders – or what they considered as such – used. Instead, Helen had watched in astonishment as they would lift objects, easily weighing a few tonnes, as if they were no more than beach balls.

Daily punch-ups amongst the town’s men were quite common. In fact, Gina had insisted to Helen that “it’s tradition”. It also wasn’t uncommon for these people to carry on their day-to-day tasks (especially those which usually required tools) with their bare hands, like splitting wood. But how could an entire town exist like this with the world oblivious. Even as isolated as it was, it should still be known about.

So, Helen asked Gina.

‘Well, the French government does know about it,’ Gina said. ‘But only since World War 2. Ever since we’ve been the ace-in-the-hole. And the one thing they really didn’t want was S.H.I.E.L.D. finding out we existed.’

‘So how are you like this?’ Helen asked.

‘Simple enough, really.’ Gina ran a series of checks on the equipment again. ‘Circa 50BC, the Romans occupy all of Gaul, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘ _No_.’

Helen’s eyebrows went up.

‘One tiny village of about 50 men or so held out against the invaders throughout the entire Roman occupation.’

‘And how did they manage that?’

‘Through a recipe brewed by the village druid, that was known only as the magic potion.’ Gina grinned. ‘One of the villagers fell into the Cauldron of potion when he was a baby. Somehow he managed to drink down the whole lot. As a result, the potion had a permanent effect on him rather than the temporary effect it was meant to have.’

‘And the effect was?’

‘Super-human strength.’

The pieces came together in Helen’s head. ‘And, over time, the potion mutated into your DNA, like it did with that one villager – except much slower.’

‘ _Oui_.’

Helen’s mind immediately latched onto all of the possibilities. ‘Is there some way I could study this potion?’

‘I’m afraid not. The recipe was only passed from druid to druid by word of mouth.’

In other words, no one had ever written it down. And, after it mutated into the DNA of the villagers, no one was ever going to need it again. That potion was long gone. Helen was disappointed, but it did bring sense to what she’s seen in the village and why Tony had seemed not to consider superior strength a reason for breaking something.

With her questions answered, Helen got back into her work.

At first, she didn’t even realise Ultron and the Maximoff twins had arrived. Then she heard the noise outside and went to look.

Later on, she’d find out that Gina and her brother, Juste, met them at the town’s gate, so to speak. Wanda’s powers had been ineffective against them, making Helen wonder just how much this magic potion was capable of. This had led Pietro to scoop his sister up and try to super-speed to the lab. Gina’s friend, Zac, had matched their pace (running backwards, apparently), while Gina had used to device to allow JARVIS access to Ultron so he could cut the being’s access to the internet before the LaChristie siblings dashed Ultron to pieces.

By the time Helen stepped out the front doors of the lab, Zac was quite literally running the Maximoffs in circles. Apparently, he had enough of it after a while and just knocked them to the ground. They both went for a tumble so he obviously hadn’t hit them that hard. And then he came to a stop between them and Helen.

Wanda lifted her head first. Pietro laid there, blinking in a way that made Helen think he didn’t quite grasp what had just happened. Wanda drew her attention back though, her hands sparking red. Zac just watched as the young woman just about hissed at him and pushed herself up. ‘Get out of my way!’

‘How about... _no_.’

Wanda lashed out with her powers. She obviously, from what Helen had heard of her powers, intended to throw Zac. But the moment her powers touched him, he just rolled on his feet and the red dissipated. Wanda drew back. ‘What...?’ Then her face tightened. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Shouldn’t I be asking that to you?’ Zac asked. ‘You invade our hometown to attack the employees of our friend, and you expect us to explain ourselves?’

‘You’re friends with that monster?’ Wanda screeched, launching herself at him in an apparent attempt to claw his eyes out.

Zac simply caught her wrists and raised an eyebrow. ‘ _Ma Cherie_ , you’re a terrorist. I wouldn’t go accusing anyone else of being a monster.’

It was now Pietro tried to get up to help her. But he’d left it a little too late. Juste was suddenly there, pinning him down. ‘I’d recommend explaining yourselves, _Monsieur_ Maximoff.’

‘You want an explanation?’ Wanda just about screeched. ‘Fine! Tony Stark killed our parents!’

All of them just looked at her like she was nuts. Helen was feeling it herself. Tony wouldn’t kill anyone. She wasn’t even sure what to say about such a bold accusation. The most she could think was “delusion”. With a sigh, Gina pulled out her cell phone. She dialled and then said into it, ‘JARVIS, could you give me the date and approximate time that the parents of the HYDRA twins died?’ Less than a minute later she hung up.

Then Gina did something odd. She lifted the face of her wrist watch. There seemed to be something underneath because she hit a few buttons and turned a dial. Then she closed the watch face. She turned the dial for the hands to move. That done, she tapped the face of her watch. With a flash of light, she was gone. Both twins jumped.

‘Where’d she go?’ Pietro demanded.

‘Back in time,’ Juste said. ‘A little before your parents died so she has time to actually get there and see what you’re ranting about. She won’t be gone long.’

Wait, this woman had a _time-travelling watch_?

Then she was back. She flicked out her cell phone again. ‘DGSE?’ She rattled off a code, which must have been a pass code to the France’s international intelligence agency who was calling. ‘ _Oui_.’ Naturally she spoke entirely in French. ‘ _Send a couple of agents up here. We’ve got a couple of delusional HYDRA terrorists. Why do I say delusional? Because when their parents were killed in the Sokovian Civil War they saw a bomb, which did not explode I may add, with the Stark Industries logo on it. The woman is insisting that Tony Stark killed their parents. And the man doesn’t seem to disagree_.’

Delusional was right.

Gina went on to explain their powers as Zac and Juste gave the twins the dirties looks they could muster. Judging from the confused looks on their faces, Helen would guess that they didn’t speak French. Of course, a country involved in a Civil War might not be too concerned with education as much as it would be, and that was even if their country taught French in schools.

But it was over, so Helen went back into the lab.

***

Tony pretty much saw it coming when he and Bruce arrived in town, shortly ahead of Fury’s Avengers. Zac and Juste were holding down the Maximoff twins. The whole time Steve had been insisting they were just kids, so Tony wasn’t surprised when he used that line to protest the way the two of them were being held down.

‘Kids?’ Gina slammed the side of her fist into his chest to stop him for coming any closer to them. Hard enough to startle him, but not hard enough to do any damage. ‘They’re both in their twenties. They were eighteen when they volunteered for HYDRA.’

‘Right, because what kind of monster let’s someone experiment on them to save their country?’ Rogers shot back.

Gina rolled her eyes. ‘What are you talking about? They volunteered for _HYDRA_ , in the middle of a civil war. There’s nothing patriotic about that. It’s like joining the Mafia in World War Two.’

Rogers jerked back as if he’d been slapped.

Gina lowered her arm and faced him fully. ‘Why are you so determined to shelter a couple of HYDRA terrorists anyway? I thought Captain America stood against HYDRA.’

‘They’re just kids!’ Steve insisted. ‘They don’t know any better!’

‘Hm.’ Gina scrutinised him. Steve began to get visibly uncomfortable.

The thing that Tony had learned early on about Gina was that she had a cunning and a shrewdness that made her wiser to ulterior motives and con-artists than most of those around her, as well as allowing her to think her way out of most if not all situations. You could say she had a suspicious personality, but it didn’t extend to everyone. She understood that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  
Her brother was much the same. It was apparently a family trait that went back longer than anyone cared to remember. As a result, most of the town trusted the family’s judgement on strangers and newcomers – which could be a problem if they happened to be wrong – even the town mayor. And it was the main reason Tony would call them up for advice over anyone else.

Hell, a few years back they’d had to explain why S.H.I.E.L.D. was a bad thing to Rhodey and Pepper.

Rogers didn’t seem to like being silenced in such a way. ‘What?’

‘What do you want?’ Gina asked slowly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

She simply repeated her question. ‘What do you want?’

Tony had been aware that Gina had already called the DGSE, so he wasn’t surprised that they rolled up during the ensuring staring contest between the super-soldier and the super-human. Rogers seemed completely deaf to them as Juste hauled Pietro up and told them why there were so many people here. One of the agents pulled out a set of leg cuffs while another grabbed what looked to be a straight-jacket. Wanda screeched out a protest.

As they moved forward to apprehend the Maximoffs, Rogers spun around and finally seemed to notice them. He grabbed his shield and Tony became very afraid he would attack the baseline humans. Of course, he should have known better. The other engineer was still standing in front of Rogers.

Gina grabbed his arm and, with the lightest yank, spun him like a top.

Tony laughed. He couldn’t help it. The sight was just so comical. The agents had a good chuckle or smirk too, but they got on with their jobs. As Bruce chuckled at the sight, Tony clapped him on the shoulder. The two of them walked around the whole lot of the hoo-hah and headed into the labs to make sure Helen and her people were all right.

A few hours later, Gina came in. ‘Everyone all right?’ she asked.

‘Oh, we’re all fine,’ Helen said. ‘You can travel time though?’

Gina chuckled. ‘Easily. Tony helped me get the patent sorted out.’

‘She’d already developed it by the time I met her.’ Tony shrugged. ‘But the public isn’t ready for time travel to exist outside of science fiction yet. It’d be like wireless energy in the Victorian Age. So they want to wait until the theory has caught up before they announce the fact that the watch exists.’

Bruce looked over at Tony. ‘That’s how you knew so much about things that happened before you were born, isn’t it? You and Gina went and looked at them.’

Tony shrugged. ‘It’s nice to go places where no one knows who I am, and nor do they care.’ He turned to Gina. ‘So, find out why Rogers wanted to excuse the HYDRA twins?’

‘ _Oui_ , when I told the DGSE about it, they called it in. The answer came from Russia, of all places. Evidently, the Winter Soldier was Rogers’ friend from Brooklyn, James Barnes. For a good chunk of the last century he’s been brainwashed into doing HYDRA’s most delicate political assassinations. The consensus is that he wanted to use the twins as precedence to get his friend out of trouble.’

‘I don’t know him too well, so I can’t make a judgement on that,’ Tony mused. ‘All the same, it’s not really the same thing.’

Gina scowled. ‘To be honest, I’d be surprised if that registered in his little brain.’

‘Are you going to get involved?’ Helen asked curiously.

‘No,’ Tony said. ‘It’s not my job to interfere with Interpol’s job. But I’ll tell you what we will do.’

‘Crack down harder on S.H.I.E.L.D.?’ Bruce asked with a slight grin.

‘You read my mind.’

**Author's Note:**

> I would be _shocked_ if this idea for the long term consequences of the magic potion never occurred to anyone else.
> 
> For the readers unfamiliar with the Asterix fandom, there doesn't seem to be any limit to what the magic potion can do (hence why it defends against Maximoff's powers). It's simply said to give the drinker super-human strength but then in _Asterix and the Magic Carper_ , Cacofonix suddenly gets total voice loss and it's cured just by him drinking the potion. And Obelix, the deuteragonist of the series (and the one who fell into the cauldron), is completely immune to a sleeping drug that's put in his food in another story.
> 
> Yes, Gina has a time-travel watch. It's more in response to Shuri's comment in the tie-in comic that she's better than Tony Stark and the apparent belief of CapStans that this would bother him. If a genius engineer would be bothered at someone else outdoing them, I doubt it'd be _Tony_.
> 
> Due credit extended to AnonHouse for commenting that the Maximoff twins joining HYDRA during their country's civil war was more comparable to someone joining the mafia during WW2, and I thought it was an excellent point.


End file.
